Many different nutritionals liquids or beverages are commercially available or otherwise known in the nutrition and formulation arts. These beverages or liquids most typically contain a balance or selected concentration of protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins, and minerals, some commercial examples of which include Boost Plus®, available from Novartis, Ensure® and Glucema® Shakes available from Ross Products Division, Abbott Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Among the myriad of such balanced nutritional beverages available to consumers, many are formulated as ready-to-feed liquids in aseptically processed or retort packaged single use cans, bottles, or other containers. These packaged beverages are formulated with an emphasis on delivering stable, balanced nutritionals that taste good and appeal to a broad range of consumer tastes. To appeal to a variety of consumer tastes, these beverages are often flavored with one or more common flavors such as vanilla flavor, chocolate, caramel flavor, fruit flavor, berry flavor, butter pecan flavor, coffee flavor, cinnamon or spice, and so forth.
These flavored beverages are also formulated so that the selected flavor matches that of the chosen color. For example, banana flavored beverages should be yellow, vanilla flavored beverages should be white, chocolate flavored beverages should be beige, and so forth. Matching flavors and colors, however, can be a challenge for many milk-based beverages. These beverages contain a variety of nutrients that potentially interact during formulation, processing and storage. These interactions can distort the color of beverage with gray, beige, or similar other discolorations, thus affecting the desired match between product flavor and color. This flavor-color matching is especially difficult in milk-based beverages in which the desired color is more readily distorted by beige or gray hues, e.g., vanilla flavored beverages, banana flavored beverages.
It has been found that iron-fortified milk-based beverages are particularly difficult to formulate with matched flavor-color combinations, especially for colors as noted above that are more readily distorted by beige and/or gray hues.
It would therefore be desirable to formulate a flavored beverage comprising fat, protein, carbohydrates, and minerals, wherein the beverage develops little or no beige and/or gray hues during formulation, processing, and storage. It would also be desirable to prepare such a beverage, especially an iron-fortified beverage, wherein the flavor and color of the beverage are accurately matched or otherwise minimally affected by the undesirable development of beige and or gray hues.